ADA soil

[Maxiflow1]

I'm planning to use ADA amazon soil + JBL and Sera fertilisers in my coming 4x2x2ft set up.
But i was told that ADA soil is sufficient and need not add any other base fertiliser.And if i'm to add in , what is the impact to the plants.

I will be planting ET,MM,hairgrass,rotala,tai yang chao,christmas moss.


Can anyone enlighten me. Thanks.

[loupgarou]

ada is esp porous, one wrong move, and your base fert will leach. avoid it.

[Maxiflow1]

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On 7/14/2003 6:23:32 PM

ada is esp porous, one wrong move, and your base fert will leach. avoid it.
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Hi loupgarou,

Care to explain further,what do u mean by base fert will leach ?
Should i avoid ADA for the time being or any other recommendation ?

thanks

[hwchoy]

well, ADA Aquasoil is not meant to be used with base fert. What I find about it is its lightness, so you may have difficulty anchoring plants. One suggest was to mix Aquasoil with gravel, but not sure how it will make it look.

[loupgarou]

no. i meant, don't use ada with base fert.
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if you want to use ada, use it with powersand or by itself.

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[hwchoy]

I think Chris meant just use ADA alone, or just use base fert with proper gravel.

[Maxiflow1]

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On 7/14/2003 6:57:34 PM

I think Chris meant just use ADA alone, or just use base fert with proper gravel.
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Thanks guys.
Has anyone tried the ADA alone,heard from LSF that it is good for plants like MM,ET,tai yang chao. Can share yr experience any comments.

[budak]

Aquasoil is essentially a peat based granule substrate, used on the basis that plants do better in an acidic substrate..... it will cause tank pH to plunge initially, and eventually settle at about 6.5-6.8 (???)..... Some use it with PowerSand (which is Amano's brand of base fert, although unlike most other products, this is pumice-based), but others use Aquasoil on its own.... I have seen people using Aquasoil sandwiched between normal lonestar.....

[kadios]

Perhaps you wanna go to Bioplast to gather some feedback from the boss there. I know that he is experimenting with ADA soil, eg. ADA with power sand, ADA sandwich between some normal gravel, etc.

Cheers!

[hwchoy]

I have Aquasoil in a 1ft cube, pH is 5.5 with no other additives. Tap water source is 7.5 but I do 25% water change every month or two. Filter is Eheim Libert 100 with active carbon and foam pad.

[Nicky]

I use 'river-bebbles' averaging about 5mm as substrate and I use Dupla Lat-G as base-fertiliser. ('River-bebbles' are hell when comes to physical planting. I will not repeat it in my new setup)

I planted all that you mentioned (ET,MM,hairgrass,rotala,tai yang chao,christmas moss) with much success (in my definition).
By Tai Yang Chao I meant the red version.

I also tried growing Tonina sp. First round was bad. People tell me that ADA is the way to go. Now I got my second batch of tonina sp. and I realised that one of my shrimps (yamato) was the culprit. It literally held on the the leaves and chew! Just one night it destroyed 5 heads of tonina sp. I got rid of that shrimp and now I got quite a few stems of tonina all growing well.

Not here to say that ADA is no good. But I guess there are much more factors to success (other than ADA products).

[Maxiflow1]

Not here to say that ADA is no good. But I guess there are much more factors to success (other than ADA products).
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[/quote]

Thanks for sharing , i guess i will try them on a smaller 2ft tank instead.

**Mr Teo has a tank with this ADA soil set up weeks ago, maybe will observe it **

[benetay]

I use JBL base fert with ADA gravel. No problems.

[hwchoy]

Bene, your ADA "gravel" is not Aquasoil right?